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Stable phenomena for some automorphism groups in topology Erik Lindell ©Erik Lindell, Stockholm, 2021 Address: Erik Lindell, Matematiska institutionen, Stockholms universitet, 106 91 Stockholm E-mail address: [email protected] ISBN 978-91-7797-991-3 Printed by Eprint AB 2021 Distributor: Department of Mathematics, Stockholm University Abstract This licentiate thesis consists of two papers about topics related to representation stability for different automorphisms groups of topological spaces and manifolds. In Paper I, we study the rational homology groups of Torelli groups of smooth, compact and orientable surfaces. The Torelli group of a smooth surface is the group of isotopy classes of orientation preserving diffeomor- phisms that act trivially on the first homology group of the surface. In the paper, we study a certain class of stable homology classes, i.e. classes that exist for sufficiently large genus, and explicitly describe the image of these classes under a higher degree version of the Johnson homomorphism, as a representation of the symplectic group. This gives a lower bound on the dimension of the stable homology of the group, as well as providing some further evidence that these homology groups satisfy representation stability for symplectic groups, in the sense of Church and Farb. In Paper II, we study pointed homotopy automorphisms of iterated wedge sums of spaces as well as boundary relative homotopy automor- phisms of iterated connected sums of manifolds with a disk removed. We prove that the rational homotopy groups of these, for simply connected CW-complexes and closed manifolds respectively, satisfy representation stability for symmetric groups, in the sense of Church and Farb. 3 4 Sammanfattning Denna licentiatavhandling best˚arav tv˚aartiklar, som b˚adabehand- lar ¨amnenrelaterade till representationstabilitet f¨orautomorfigrupper av olika topologiska rum och m˚angfalder. I Artikel I studeras de rationella homologigrupperna av Torelligrup- per av sl¨ata,kompakta och orienterbara ytor. Torelligruppen av en sl¨at yta ¨argruppen av isotopiklasser av orienteringsbevarande diffeomorfier som verkar trivialt p˚aytans f¨orstahomologigrupp. I artikeln studeras en specifik klass av stabila homologiklasser, dvs. klasser som existerar d˚a ytans genus ¨artillr¨ackligt stort, och bilden av dessa klasser under en vari- ant av Johnsonhomomorfismen i h¨ogrehomologisk grad beskrivs explicit, som en representation av den symplektiska gruppen. Detta ger en undre begr¨ansningp˚agruppens stabila homologi och ¨aven vidare bel¨aggsom pekar p˚aatt dessa homologigrupper uppfyller representationsstabilitet, i den mening som definierats av Church och Farb. I Artikel II studeras baspunktsbevarande homotopiautomorfier av iter- erade kilsummor av rum och randkomponentsrelativa homotopiautomor- fier av sammanh¨angandesummor av m˚angfaldermed en disk borttagen. De rationella homotopigrupperna av dessa, f¨orenkelt sammanh¨angande CW-komplex, respektive slutna m˚angfalder,bevisas uppfylla representa- tionsstabilitet f¨orsymmetriska grupper, i den mening som definierats av Church och Farb. 5 6 Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor Dan Petersen for all of his help and general support. His advice and inspiration has been invaluable. My co-advisor, Alexander Berglund, has also given me a lot of inspi- ration, as well as thoughtful advice and feedback, for which I am truly thankful. I would also like to thank Bashar Saleh for inviting me to work on the project that led to the second paper included in this thesis. 7 8 List of papers The following papers, referred to in the text by their Roman numerals, are included in this thesis. Paper I: Abelian cycles in the homology of the Torelli group Erik Lindell, Submitted. Paper II: Representation stability for homotopy automorphisms Erik Lindell, Bashar Saleh 9 10 Contents Abstract 3 Sammanfattning 5 Acknowledgments 7 List of papers 9 General Introduction 13 1 Introduction . 15 2 Torelli groups of surfaces . 16 2.1 Mapping class groups . 16 2.2 Torelli groups . 20 2.3 The homology of Torelli groups . 22 2.4 The Johnson homomorphism . 23 2.5 Summary of Paper I . 24 3 Representation stability and homotopy automorphisms . 26 3.1 Homological stability . 26 3.2 Representation stability . 29 3.3 Summary of Paper II . 33 Bibliography 37 11 12 General introduction 1. Introduction This thesis consists of two papers that are not directly related, so let us start by putting these in a common context. The first theme relating the two papers is that they concern questions that arise from studying automorphisms of topological spaces or manifolds, in an appropriate cat- egory. There are several categories that are natural to consider in this context. In the category of topological spaces, the automorphisms of a space X are the self-homeomorphisms, which we denote by Homeo(X). In the category of smooth manifolds, the automorphisms are the self-diffeomorphisms, which we will denote by Diff(X). In homotopy theory, it is more natural to consider homotopy automorphisms than homeomorphisms, i.e. homo- topy self-equivalences. These are precisely those maps that become auto- morphisms in the homotopy category of spaces1 We will use hAut(X) to denote the homotopy automorphisms of a space X, which is a (grouplike) topological monoid, rather than a group. If the type of automorphisms we consider is not specified, we will simply write Aut(X). Remark 1.1. Since the spaces of automorphisms that we consider are topological groups or grouplike monoids, we may define classifying spaces B Aut(X). The classifying space B hAut(X) classifies fibrations E ! B with fiber homotopy equivalent to X. Similarly, B Homeo(X) and B Diff(X) classify topological and smooth fiber bundles E ! B with fiber X, respectively. The second theme connecting the two papers is stability. In each case, we study some sequence of spaces X1 ! X2 !···! Xn !··· that naturally induces maps Aut(X1) ! Aut(X2) !···! Aut(Xn) allowing us to ask what happens with the automorphisms when n tends to infinity. More specifically, we study the stabilization behavior of some associated algebraic invariants, such as rational homotopy or homology 1The \correct" notion of the homotopy category uses weak homotopy equiva- lences, rather than homotopy equivalences. In all situations we will consider, the spaces have the homotopy type of CW-complexes, however, so by the Whitehead theorem, we do not have to make this distinction. 15 groups. For this reason, all vector spaces, homology and cohomology will be over the rational numbers, unless otherwise specified. The common context we have now described is much broader than the specific subject matter of Papers I and II. In fact, this general introduc- tion will generally be more meandering than what is strictly necessary to understand the results of these papers. The aim of this is to provide a somewhat broader view into the areas that these papers are part of. In particular, we will review a large number of examples that can be safely skipped by the reader who only wants the background necessary for un- derstanding the specific results of the papers. 2. Torelli groups of surfaces 2.1. Mapping class groups. In many situations, we are only interested in automorphisms of a space up to homotopy equivalence. For an ori- + entable manifold M, we define its mapping class group to be π0 Homeo (M), i.e. the group of isotopy classes of orientation preserving homeomorphisms of M. In Paper I, we study Torelli groups of compact orientable surfaces, which are important subgroups of their mapping class groups and which we will define in the next subsection. For this reason, we will restrict our attention to compact surfaces for the rest of this section. Remark 2.1. For smooth manifolds, we generally define the mapping class group as the group of isotopy classes of self-diffeomorphisms, rather than homeomorphisms. However, it is a classic result that every home- omorphism of a smooth and compact surface is homotopic to a diffeo- morphism. In fact, in this situation it is also true that every homotopy automorphism is homotopic to a homeomorphism, so for a smooth and compact surface X, we have ∼ ∼ π0 hAut(X) = π0 Homeo(X) = π0 Diff(X): This means that in the context of Paper I, it is not really important which category we consider. For concreteness, however, we will work primarily with diffeomorphisms. For g ≥ 0, let Sg denote a closed, orientable surface of genus g, as in + Figure 1. We let Γg := π0 Diff (Sg) denote the mapping class groups of isotopy classes of orientation preserving diffeomorphisms of Sg. We can also consider surfaces with marked points and boundary compo- s nents, which we write as Sg;r if there are r marked points and s boundary 16 components. In these cases, we only consider isotopy classes of diffeomor- phisms that fix the set of marked points and fix the boundary components s pointwise. We write Γg;r for the mapping class group of a surface with r marked points and s boundary components. If there are no marked points or boundary components, we simply omit the corresponding index. We s may note that we have a natural homomorphism Γg;r ! Γg, induced by + s + the map Diff (Sg;r) ! Diff (Sg) given by forgetting the marked points, gluing disks to the boundary components and extending diffeomorphisms by the identity. Figure 1: A closed, orientable surface of genus 6. Remark 2.2. We may also view mapping class groups from a more geo- s metric angle. If we let Mg;r denote the moduli space of complex, smooth and projective curves of genus g with r marked points and s marked non- zero tangent vectors (or, equivalently up to homotopy, Riemann surfaces of genus g with r marked points and s boundary components), it turns out s s that Γg;r is precisely the (orbifold) fundamental group of Mg;r.